Wednesday, 7 March 2018

Today in the whole world, shipment of smartphones has increased a lot. It is from 2007 that the smartphones are becoming more and more famous. And now in 2018, each person has it's own smartphone. Smartphone has battery which gives power to it. And this battery is rechargeable, we can recharge it if our phone runs out of battery. These batteries have certain capacity which is measured in mAh.

Earlier our phone usage was really less so battery capacity was also less, but as companies added more features in phones, our phone usage increases. More usage means faster drain out of battery. So batteries started draining out quickly and we have to recharge it more often in a day. So companies started fitting larger capacity batteries in the phone. Now the battery life of the phone had increased but a new problem occurred.

These larger batteries take longer time to charge. So companies introduced a new technology named fast charging. This can charge these larger batteries quicker than earlier. For the phone to support this fast charging it's hardware should be compatible. For this fast charging, companies are bundling a fast charger in the box with the phone. Every charger has a power rating which is the multiplication of current and voltage supplied by this charger to the phone, and is measured in watts.

Smartphone brands thought if we increase the power rating of the charger it will supply more power to the phone during some particular time provided the hardware of the phone supports. And so the battery of the phone will fill up quickly. This power rating is simply the multiplication of current and voltage, which can be raised by increasing either current or voltage. So some technologies increase current while some increase voltage for fast charging.

There are many fast charging technologies in the market like Qualcomm's Quick charging, Oneplus Dash charging, Oppo's VOOC charging and many more. So a phone running on Qualcomm's snapdragon chip may support fast charging depending on the version of the chip. Every phone has a specific power rating at which it's battery can be charged. So when we connect a phone with a charger it communicates with the phone that I have this power rating and thus the charger supplies that much power to the phone. So if the phone's hardware has fast charging support it will take more power from the fast charger and it's battery will be charged quickly.

We must have noticed that when our phone's battery is low it gets charged very quickly but as the battery level rises the rate of battery charging becomes slow and when the battery reaches 85%-90% the battery charging becomes super slow. This is because when the battery is empty, there is lot of space in it so the fast charger takes advantage of this and fill up the battery quickly with the help of larger power. But as the battery starts filling, the space becomes less available and rate of charging also gets down, so the power supplied also changes. So this is how fast charging works.

As already mentioned there are many fast charging technologies in the market namely Oppo VOOC, Oneplus dash and Qualcomm's Quick charging. Oppo VOOC and dash charging works on same concept as Oppo is the parent company of Oneplus that is more current supply for fast charging. While Qualcomm's Quick charge increases voltage for fast charging. Oneplus dash charging has the maximum rating of 5V/4A which equals to 20W while Quick charge has maximum output of 18W with 9V/2A or 12V/1.67A.

Among all these Oneplus Dash charging is fastest, it can charge the phone from 0 to 63% in 30 minutes. And the phone will be fully charged in 1hr15 minutes. It achieves fast charging with the help of high current and so the cable of the charger is made thicker to bear the high current. Thus the use of any other cable with this charger may result in damage of the cable or phone. So it only charges phone quickly with it's own supplied cable.

When we do some task on our phone our phone processor heats up due to the load of that task. When the battery is charging, phone also heats up due to higher power input in the phone. So when we uses the phone while it is charging the net heat will increase resulting in more heating. So the phone can damage with more heat. But it never happens. When we use our phone while it is charging, the charger put less power input in the phone depending on the tasks running on the phone so that there won't be any excessive heating which can damage the phone.